


My Perfect Thief

by kawuli



Category: Leverage
Genre: (emotional abuse), Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Parker Backstory, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 13:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12960555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawuli/pseuds/kawuli
Summary: “Kid, you’re lucky you ended up here, nobody else would put up with your shit.”Parker's latest foster family is just like all the rest. Maybe they're right, maybe no one will put up with her. Fine.Fuckfamilies. Parker doesn’t want one.New York City is far enough away and big enough to get lost in, and Parker knows how to survive on her own. And then she runs into the strangest thief she's ever met. Archie Leach has a plan for Parker that for once she's happy to go along with. She's going to be the best thief ever.





	My Perfect Thief

**Author's Note:**

> Amazing fanvid by [magnetgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/pseuds/magnetgirl) [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12962178)
> 
> Thanks!

Parker didn’t really mind juvie. There were rules, and if you followed them you mostly got left alone. If there’d been a little more privacy, she might rather have stayed.

But there’s too many people and too much noise and she doesn’t really know how you go about asking to stay anyway, so after a few months, she’s walking out with the practically-nothing she came in with.

There’s a social worker waiting with a car.

“Hi, Parker,” she says with a smile, “My name’s Allison, I’m going to take you to your placement. They’re looking forward to meeting you.”

Parker doesn’t say anything to that, just climbs into the back seat and puts on her seat belt. People should quit lying so much, maybe then she’d actually want to talk to them. The social worker’s smile disappears and she gets in the car and stops trying to make conversation.

It’s a long drive, down a country highway and into a little town with a sign that proclaims it “Cedarville” in curlicue script. “I’m not going back to Kansas City?” Parker asks.

The social worker looks at Parker in the rear-view mirror. “No,” she says. “The judge thought it would be better if you made a fresh start, somewhere out of the city.”

Parker considers that, and decides she doesn’t really have an opinion one way or another.

They pull up to a neat house with a tiny square of grass in front, cement steps up to a screened-in porch. Parker gets out, stands by the car until the social worker comes around to join her.

“Come on,” she says, and Parker follows her up to the door.

A man answers the bell, in an untucked button-down shirt and nice pants. The kind of guy who’d probably have a cheap car, but keep it washed and waxed so you could see your face in it.

“Hi, Andy, I’m Allison,” the social worker says, extending her hand for him to shake. Then she puts a hand on Parker’s shoulder. “And this is Parker.”

Parker just stands there for a second while they both watch. Then, oh, right. She’s supposed to say something. “Uh, nice to meet you.”

She sticks out her hand, on the basis that if the social worker did it then probably it’s not _wrong_.

One of Andy’s eyebrows goes up, but he shakes her hand. “C’mon in,” he says.

Parker steps up, through the porch and into the house. There’s yellow carpet—or brown, in between somewhere. It looks scratchy. Andy walks past the TV and the couch, calls, “Janet, the kid’s here,” while waving towards a table and chairs. Allison sits down at the table and Parker follows.

A woman comes out of the kitchen. Her hands keep moving, tucking strands of hair back, tugging at her shirt, and she looks from Parker to Allison to Andy and back, quick like she’s counting them out.

And then she smiles, sits down at the table and starts pouring something from a pitcher into glasses. Andy sits at the end of the table, leaning back a little, arms crossed. “How was the drive?” Janet asks.

“Oh, not bad,” Allison says. “Not like there’s much traffic out this way.”

“Well I guess not,” Janet says, and Parker stops paying attention, because they’re doing that thing adults do where they talk about shit Parker doesn’t even think _they_ care about, and she’s never been able to figure out why. She traces the wood grain in the table with a finger instead, until she hears her name.

“Parker?” Allison repeats.

“Yes?” Parker guesses.

“Honey, did you even hear what I asked?” Janet asks, leaning forward.

Parker shakes her head and looks back down.

“What _grade_ are you in, I asked,” Janet says, slow like she thinks Parker can’t hear.

Parker shrugs. “Sixth, I think,” she says. She’s pretty sure this is another nonsense question, it’s probably written down somewhere.

“Good,” Janet says, “then we’ll take you to the school in the morning, get you all settled.”

Parker nods, goes back to the wood grain.

“Okay, Parker,” Allison says after a bit. “I need to get back. You’ll be alright?”

It sounds like a question, so Parker nods. She wonders if Allison is going to try hugging her. Sometimes social workers do that.

But no, Allison just puts a hand on her shoulder again, smiles at Parker and lets the other two walk her to the door.

They come back, and something’s different. Janet picks up the glasses and the pitcher and hurries into the kitchen, and Andy sits back down in his chair. “Now you listen,” he says, and waits. Parker finally looks over to see why he stopped talking. “Yeah, there. You look at me when I’m talking.” Just him saying it makes Parker want to look away, but she tries. “There’s rules in this house, okay? You’re gonna help Janet with the chores, you’re gonna keep your room clean, and you’re not gonna make trouble, y’hear?”

Parker nods.

“And you’re gonna answer me when I’m talking to you,” he adds.

“Yes?” Parker guesses, when he keeps looking at her like she’s supposed to say something.

“Yes what?”

Parker doesn’t know.

His mouth pinches. “Yes, _sir,_ ” he snaps. “Say it.”

“Yes, sir.” Parker says. That seems to satisfy him.

“Alright, Janet’s gonna show you your room, she got you some clothes from the Goodwill, you best take good care of them.”

Parker nods, catches herself. “Yes, sir,” she says.

“That’s right,” he says. “Janet!”

 

Janet chatters all the way up the stairs and into the bedroom. There’s a set of bunk beds against the wall, two dressers, a desk. The walls are pink. The carpet is like the stuff downstairs, except pink. There are pink curtains and pink bedspreads and a pink lamp on the desk.

It looks like the inside of a dollhouse.

“Here’s your things,” Janet says, opening one of the dressers. “Pants and skirts are here, shirts here, socks and underwear and everything.”

Parker looks. Not too much pink, at least.

“You’ll be sharing with Bridget,” she says. “She’ll be home from school in a bit, Randall will have to stay later for practice but he’ll be home for dinner.”

Parker nods, remembers downstairs. “Yes ma’am” she adds, and Janet looks pleased.

“Now I expect you’re tired,” she says. “I’ll leave you be for a bit, you let me know if you need something.”

Parker looks around. “Which bed’s mine?” she asks.

“Bridget says you can have the top,” Janet says.

Good.

Janet hesitates for a minute, then disappears, leaving Parker standing in the middle of the room.

 

* * *

 

 Parker tries to make it work, she really does.

Well, at first she does.

But school is stupid and annoying and people talk about her behind her back and she’s doing fine in math class but she seriously cannot make herself care about the War of 1812. Other than the burning down the White House part. That part’s cool. The rest of it is boring.

Bridget is two years younger and has curly bouncy blonde hair and a whole herd of friends and sighs when Parker comes to meet her so they can walk home together. Because they are supposed to walk home together.

“I gotta go,” Bridget says to her friends, rolling her eyes and turning slowly around.

“Come on,” she says to Parker, and starts walking.

It’s not far to home, unfortunately, and as soon as they walk in Bridget goes over to the couch and drops onto it with a big sigh, as though she’s finally letting go of something. “Mom,” she calls, “We’re home, I don’t have homework, can I go to Stacey’s house?”

Janet comes around the corner from the kitchen. “You’re sure you don’t have homework?” she asks.

“No,” Bridget says, and her eyes shift to one side so Parker’s pretty sure she’s lying. “And I can be back before Daddy comes home.” She sticks out her lower lip and makes her eyes big. “Please, mom?”

Janet shakes her head. “Okay, fine, be back by five o’clock so you can help set the table.”

Bridget jumps up and heads out the door, her school backpack abandoned next to the couch.

“Come on,” Janet says. “You can chop vegetables for the casserole.”

She turns and walks into the kitchen without waiting to see if Parker will follow.

Parker goes as far as the door. “I have homework,” she says.

“You can do it after supper, come on, I can’t be expected to wait on you hand and foot.”

Parker goes into the kitchen, gets the knife and the cutting board off the drying rack, takes the vegetables Janet hands her and starts chopping. The onion is the worst, the layers slip away from her fingers and the smell makes her eyes sting. After that it’s kind of fun, if she pretends she’s chopping up a monster with carrots for legs. At least she gets to use a knife.

Once she’s done with the vegetables, Parker turns to go, but Janet calls her back. “You make sure everything’s picked up downstairs here, Andy doesn’t like mess. Take Bridget’s backpack up to her room, see if there’s anything else out of place.”

Parker nods, turns to go. At least Janet doesn’t make her say “yes ma’am,” doesn’t usually demand that Parker look right at her when she’s talking.

Bridget’s backpack is the only thing Parker can see that’s out of place. She picks it up and goes upstairs into Bridget’s room. Parker sleeps here too, her clothes are here, but that doesn’t make it hers. Bridget’s the one who got the walls painted pink and pink-flower curtains. Bridget can kick Parker out when her friends come over.

Parker opens Bridget’s backpack, looks through it. No stray quarters lodged in the corners today, no forgotten candy. There’s a few dollar bills, but Bridget will notice if Parker takes one. She tried once, slipped a dollar out of Bridget’s bag, but the next day while they were walking to school Bridget looked over and said “I know you took my money. If you give it back, and you’re _real_ nice to me, I won’t tell Daddy. Otherwise I will, and you’ll get sent back to _jail_.”

Parker gave the money back, and as far as she knows Bridget didn’t tell Andy anything, but Andy is already good at coming up with reasons for why he should call up social services and make them take her back. He doesn’t need Bridget’s help for that.

So Parker doesn’t steal Bridget’s money unless it’s quarters she might forget about.

She’s bored. She’s not allowed to wander around outside, she might get lost and kidnapped and killed (so says Andy). Parker doubts that, but it’s not worth the fight if they catch her. But it’s warm enough to feel like spring, and she doesn’t want to stay inside, so she opens the window and climbs up to the roof.

It’s better up here, the sun heats up the shingles so it’s warm, the wind’s just enough to blow the branches of the tree in the front so she can watch them move. Nobody else comes up here so it’s her place. Just hers.

She’s not paying attention to anything really until she hears the garage door opening and the car’s engine pulling in and stopping. Then Parker scrambles down, quick, pulls the window all the way open and slides in.

Bridget’s standing next to the bed, watching. Her eyes go wide and she runs to the doorway. “Mom, Parker was climbing in the window.”

There’s silence for a moment. Then it’s Andy’s steps on the stairway, down the hall, into the room. “What the hell were you doing?” he asks, hands going to his hips, thumbs hooked in his belt.

Parker shrugs, looking down. “I dunno,” she says.

“You don’t know. Lotta things you don’t know, girl, starting with what I’m gonna do if I find you doing that again, y’hear?”

Parker nods, still looking down at the pink scratchy carpet.

“Parker?” It’s a warning.

Parker looks up. “Yes, sir,” she says, and he scowls and walks out.

Bridget smiles at Parker and leaves, curls bouncing and nose in the air.

 

Parker doesn’t get caught on the roof again, but it’s lost its magic. It’s not hers if they know about it, if she has to keep climbing over to look in the window and check the time. But if she skips school, she has the whole day until she has to meet up with Bridget, and she can go anywhere she wants and nobody stops her. She walks out into a cornfield, climbs a tree outside the grocery store, uses her saved up quarters from Bridget’s backpack to buy french fries and a Frosty from the Wendy’s.

She goes a whole week before someone calls the house.

When they get to the house, Janet is standing on the front steps with her arms crossed. Bridget looks over. “Ooooh, you’re in trouble,” she says, then slips past her mom and inside.

“Parker,” Janet says, unmoving, blocking the door. “Your teacher just called, she said she hopes you’re feeling better and wants to know if she should send homework with Bridget, or if there’s someone who could help.”

Parker looks down. It’s easy to fake Janet’s handwriting, and if someone saw her slipping the note into the teacher’s mailbox after school, they haven’t said.

“Parker?” Janet makes it sound like a question.

Parker doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say, so she stays quiet.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Janet asks.

Parker shrugs. “School’s dumb,” she says. “I didn’t want to go.”

Janet sighs, closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Go on, go wash your hands and then come help me.”

Parker’s in the living room watching TV with Randall, who’s pretending not to notice her, when Andy comes home. There’s a short whispered conversation in the kitchen, and then he comes out, finds Parker, grabs her arm and hauls her to her feet.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asks.

Parker keeps her mouth shut. He doesn’t actually want to know, she figured that out a while ago.

“God knows you’re no kid of mine but you’re in my house and you will behave yourself,” he says.

“I do all my chores,” Parker says quietly. “I stay out of the way. I just don’t like school.”

“Unbelievable,” Andy says, shaking his head. “Go upstairs, sit in Bridget’s room and write me down a list of things you’re grateful for. Then you can have supper, but not until. Randall, come on, let’s eat.”

He doesn’t even wait for a “Yes, sir” before he walks away.

Parker takes a deep breath and walks up the stairs.

What is she grateful for? She has food to eat, but most of it’s kind of gross. She has a bed to sleep in and a house to keep her warm and dry. That part’s okay. House, bed—that’s two things.

She has two more—clothes and shoes—when Andy comes upstairs, walks in and closes the door behind him.

“Well?”

Parker hands him the paper. He looks at it for a long time. It can’t take that long to read four words.

“Kid, you’re lucky you ended up here, nobody else would put up with your shit,” Andy growls. “Go wash the dishes, ask Janet for something to do after that. Apparently we’ll just have to keep you occupied.”

It’s stupid. Everything here is stupid, and maybe Andy’s right, because nobody has ever put up with Parker for very long. Or else she hasn’t put up with them, but all that ever got her is a new shitty place to live and new shitty family.

Maybe families are the problem. They just yell at her and make her do dumb chores and go to stupid school and not climb on the roof. Social workers always say she _has_ to have a family, but what do they know? She just has to go somewhere they can’t find her. Somewhere far away. She can get shoes and clothes and food just fine on her own, and a place to sleep isn’t impossible either if you plan it right.

_Fuck_ families. She doesn’t want one.

 

* * *

 

Parker learned from the last time – you can’t just blow up the house and walk away. So this time she has a plan: a map, stolen out of the family room bookcase, and a notebook full of information collected from all the books the library had, because you just don’t steal from libraries, and anyway it’d be too heavy to take all those books.

It’s the last day of school. Parker walks to school with Bridget, goes to class. For five minutes—she counts them. It’s loud, everyone is running around and yelling and talking about what they’re going to do on their summer vacations, and it’s not like Parker usually talks to them so nobody cares that she’s sitting quietly at her seat in the corner.

And nobody really notices when she leaves.

People don’t pay attention. It makes everything easier, once you know that. If they were paying attention, they might wonder why Parker’s backpack was twice as full as usual. They might wonder why she was wearing jeans and a jacket even though it’s hot. They might wonder where she’s going when she slips out of the classroom.

The bathroom, first. Until the bell rings and everything goes quiet.

The sixth grade lockers are on the first floor. Parker already took sixth grade once, but they made her do it again because… something. But it makes this part easier.

Parker takes out her backpack, leaves the books and papers just as they are, and walks out the door. Like it’s nothing unusual. And nobody notices.

Because people don’t pay attention. Especially on the last day of school.

 

The bus driver gives her a funny look when she drops in her fare and sits down. But he doesn’t actually say anything. Neither does the next bus driver. And by then she’s in downtown Kansas City and it’s late enough for school to be out, so nobody pays much attention to another kid with a backpack.

The Greyhound station is dirty and smells like cigarettes.

“One ticket to New York City, please,” Parker says. Just like she practiced.

“Aren’t you a little young to be going all that way by yourself?” The woman behind the counter is smiling at her, but the words are dangerous. Luckily Parker practiced this too.

“I’m going to visit my uncle,” she says. “For the summer.”

The woman nods, takes Parker’s money, tells her, “Be careful now, y’hear?”

“I will,” Parker says, and “Thank you,” because Janet says it’s important to be polite.

Janet says a lot of things. She says little girls should not skip school. She says good girls say grace before meals with their eyes closed, Parker, and sit still, be respectful. Parker has a hard time managing eyes-closed-sit-still, and she’s not a little girl, and she’ll stop skipping school when school stops being terrible, but polite is like a secret code that makes people be nicer to you. So “please,” and “thank you,” and the ticket woman smiles at her and watches her take her seat in the waiting room and doesn’t ask any more questions.

 

It’s a while to wait before the bus comes, but that’s okay. The map is awkward to pull out, but Parker’s notebook isn’t. She takes it out of the bag, checks the rest of her supplies: granola bars to eat on the trip, a bottle of water, extra jeans and t-shirt, socks and underwear, fuzzy blanket rolled up tight around Bunny, a bowl and a spoon for cereal, a map of New York City with promising places circled. One hundred dollars rolled up inside a sock, one hundred in each jeans pocket, one hundred minus bus fare in the zipper pocket of her jacket. Andy thinks banks are a scam because…something about the End Times and the Mark of the Beast that Parker doesn’t bother trying to understand. But his safe is not even hidden and the combination is Bridget's birthday, so it worked out fine for Parker.

She reads through the notebook again. She has a plan. It’s a good plan. By tomorrow she’s going to be in New York City and nobody is going to find her.

 

The bus is half empty, which means Parker doesn’t have to sit next to anyone. It fills up later, through St. Louis in the evening and Indianapolis at midnight and Columbus where they have to wait so long Parker thinks she might scream… Philadelphia in the morning and then: New York.

 

* * *

 

Parker didn’t sleep on the bus. Too many people, too much noise, too much strangeness. And now the bus terminal is flickering fluorescent lights and so crowded that people keep bumping into her and jostling her backpack and everyone talking at once and announcements over the loudspeakers and bright advertisements on the wall and graffiti over top of everything and she knows she’s supposed to find the subway but there’s so many different signs pointing all different directions that she can’t sort out where to go.

She walks with the crowd, because it’s the easiest thing to do, until they come out into a bigger room and the people thin out and there’s a bench up against one wall with nobody sitting on it and Parker heads for it before she drowns in all the motion and noise.

She’s sitting there, knees up, trying to remember how to breathe, when a woman sits down next to her.

Not right next to her, at least, but close enough. The woman looks at Parker.

“You okay?” she asks.

Parker nods.

“You here by yourself?”

There’s a script for this, too, but Parker can’t remember it, so she just nods again.

“Do you need a place to stay?”

Parker starts to shake her head, then remembers she should use words. “No,” she says, because that’s a word she can almost always find, even when she’s not allowed to say it out loud.

“Okay,” the woman says.

Parker looks over. That…wasn’t what she was expecting. The woman is young, with long brown hair loose around her face. She’s wearing ripped jeans and boots and a worn-thin T-shirt, and her backpack is twice as big as Parker’s and more than twice as dirty.

Andy would hate her. So Parker decides to like her. “I’m fine,” she says. “I have a plan.”

It’s still not quite the right words, but the woman just smiles. “Sounds good,” she says. “But hey, if you need anything, my name’s Joan. Ask for me at C Squat, off 9th, they’ll help you out.”

Parker nods. Joan takes a deep breath and stands up, and Parker remembers to be polite.

“Thank you.”

Joan looks at her and nods. “No problem,” she says, and disappears into the crowd.

Parker takes a few more deep breaths, then takes off her backpack and digs into it to find the map.

 

The first place Parker goes is the library. The main library building is only three blocks away from the bus station, but when she gets there…

She walks all the way around the building, because she can’t quite believe she’s in the right place. But it says “The New York Public Library” on the front, over the columns at the top of the wide stairs.

Apparently even libraries are different in New York City. Parker could go in anyway, probably, but there’s a lot of people and it’s very fancy and the point of libraries is that they’re quiet, and this one definitely won’t be.

So she finds a spot to hide and looks at the map again. She could go to another library, there’s one eight short blocks north and four long blocks west, or she could go find the subway.

The subway will definitely not be quiet, so Parker heads for the other library, hoping it will be more like a regular library and less like a fancy museum.

It is. The Columbus Library looks about like what Parker expected, but it’s still bigger than any library she’s been in before. Lucky for her there’s places to sit and read. And you don’t need a library card unless you want to take something _out_ , and Parker just wants to bring herself _in_.

 

She really was going to read. It’s just that she’s tired, so when someone comes over and touches her shoulder she jerks awake and almost slams her head into the face that’s looking down at her.

“You okay, honey?” the woman asks.

Parker nods.

“You must have been tired,” she goes on. “Stay up too late now that school’s out?”

Parker looks around, shrugs. “Yeah,” she says.

“Well, just so long as you’re okay.” The woman looks her up and down, like the school nurse looking her over for bruises, but Parker was so careful before she left that even Andy couldn’t find anything to be mad about.

Parker nods again, and the woman goes away.

 

Parker isn’t sure what time it is, but she’s hungry, and you can’t eat in libraries, so she goes back outside to see if there’s a McDonalds or something. At Andy and Janet’s house she knew where all the cheap places were, over by the highway, lined up in a row so you could choose. The library books about New York City had lists of restaurants, but the lists were so long Parker gave up trying to sort them out.

But with that many restaurants there’s gotta be something to eat close by, so Parker starts walking. South, she decides. Toward the middle.

There isn’t McDonalds or any other chain fast food place, but there is a guy with a little cart who’s selling hot dogs.

Parker likes hamburgers better, but she likes the little cart—it’s efficient. Doesn’t take up much space, and if you don’t like where you are you can move it somewhere else. And hot dogs are okay.

She has to stand on tip-toes to see the guy inside, but he takes her money, gives her a hotdog with nothing on it, and Parker loads it up with plenty of mustard and ketchup and stands out of the way against a building wall to eat it.

 

New York City is full of places to hide. You’d think, with that many people, it’d be hard to find an empty spot, but actually, you just have to know where to look. And when. Plus, with that many people, you can hide without really hiding, because nobody pays attention. Like in the subway. You can ride all the way from Coney Island in Brooklyn to Van Cortland Park in the Bronx, and nobody really even looks at you. Even when you’re taking their wallets. Subways and hot dogs and cereal and the laundromat cost money, and what she brought won’t last forever.

And there are so many libraries, Parker can rotate which one she sleeps in so she won’t stand out there either.

She tried to break in, the first time she wanted to sleep at a library. But apparently even libraries have alarms here, because as soon as she’d picked the lock to the side door, there were police sirens and noise inside the building and she’d run before someone could find her.

Now she mostly just hides near closing time, in one of the bathrooms, or following the security on their checks. Some places have all-night security guards, but most of them don’t. Because they have alarms, _apparently_ , so they don’t need people walking around inside.

And then there’s Central Park, where there’s still lots of people but at least there’s grass, and there’s the pool that has showers, and outside it’s quieter because all the noise escapes into the sky or something.

 

The problem is, school is starting next week. And librarians are just the kind of people who will pay attention if you’re in the library when you’re supposed to be in school. Maybe the subway or the parks will be okay for during school hours but… it seems risky.

Not that Parker couldn’t do it if she needs to, but it does make her think. About the other thing. The thing where Joan said Parker could come find her if she needed a place to stay. C Squat is not on Parker’s map, or in her book, but Joan said it was off 9th street. Maybe it’s worth checking out.

 

The nice thing about New York City is that Parker doesn’t have to guess where 9th Street is. Central Park starts at 59th, the Columbus Library is on 51st, the fancy library is on 42nd, so Parker just has to keep going south and she’ll get to Ninth. Jefferson Market Library is on 9th street, she can take the C train to 14th, and then she can just keep walking until she finds Joan’s place. Streets go the short way, so it can’t be that far to walk.

9th street starts off nice, but the further Parker walks the more rundown the buildings get, until as the Avenue numbers run down, there’s boarded up windows and abandoned buildings scattered around, people lounging on front steps with cigarettes and colorful hair and worn-out clothes.

Parker slows down, slouches a little, pretends she’s heading out with Kelly and his friends to boost cars. Tries to walk the way they did. She doesn’t find C Squat, but she does find C _street_ , and when she looks left, there’s a couple of people fixing something on the door of one of the buildings.

Parker walks up to them, takes a breath and looks up. “Hey,” she says, then waits for someone to notice her.

“What d’you want, kid?”

“I’m looking for Joan,” Parker says. “She said to ask at C squat. Is that here?”

Someone else looks over. “Joan? She’s not here right now.”

They look at each other. “But you can hang out if you want.”

Parker looks around. She’s not sure where else she’d go. “Okay,” she says, and they move to let her through.

One girl follows her in, waits while Parker looks around the big open space that seems to be most of the bottom floor. The walls have layers of spray-painted graffiti, the wood floor is scarred and stained, and a couple half-broken old couches are all the furniture Parker can see.

It’s kind of a lot to take in, but Parker thinks she likes it.

“You want some water?” the girl asks, going towards the back.

“Sure,” Parker says.

The girl comes back with two plastic cups full of lukewarm water and passes one to Parker. “How d’you know Joan?”

Parker shrugs. “Met her at the bus station.”

The girl doesn’t ask any more questions, which is nice. She just nods. “Well, she’ll be back in a bit, you can just chill here.” She takes her water and heads back to the door.

Parker curls up on one of the couches. It smells like cigarette smoke and dust, but it’s comfortable, and Parker’s tired.

She wakes up from her half-sleep when she hears the door open. She blinks in the light until she thinks she recognizes Joan.

And Joan must recognize Parker, because she smiles and comes over. “Hey, kid,” Joan says, sitting next to Parker. “How’ve you been?”

Parker shrugs. She’s not quite sure how to act, here. Nice little girl works for most of the time, tough kid is good for people like outside, but Joan is looking at her like… like she’s just a person. So she doesn’t know what to say.

“You need a place to stay?”

Parker takes a breath. “Yeah,” she says. “If you’ve got one,” she adds, looking around and trying not to sound like she really _needs_ it. Because she doesn’t, not really.

Joan’s mouth quirks up at one corner, but she just nods. “Not in this building,” she says, but goes on quick before Parker can be too disappointed. “There’s a place over on 7th, though. They’ve got space. They’re cool, I’ll take you over if you want?”

Parker shrugs again. “Sure,” she says, trying to make the word come out slow, not fast and eager because that’d make it seem like a big deal.

Joan just nods. “C’mon,” she says, getting up.

Parker grabs her backpack and follows.

 

Seventh Street is only a couple blocks, of course, and they only walk halfway up from C street before Jane stops. This building doesn’t look much like the other one. It looks abandoned, most of the windows covered in plywood, the front bricks crumbling in places. Joan knocks on the door, though, so Parker guesses someone must live there.

And sure enough, there’s the sound of a padlock being unlocked and the door swings in. “Hey, Megan,” Joan says, walking in. “Brought you a new tenant.”

Megan, apparently, is a little shorter than Joan, with short, curly hair that’s hopelessly tangled, and at least three rings in each ear. She’s wearing overalls and a tank top, bare feet peeking out. She looks from Joan to Parker. “Oh yeah? What’s up, kid?”

Parker swallows. “Not much,” she says, trying to match Megan’s tone. “Just looking for a place to stay.”

Megan raises an eyebrow at Joan, who shrugs. She turns back to Parker. “You got a name?”

“Parker.”

“Okay, Parker, we’re still fixing up the place, but we’ve got the space if you don’t mind helping out.”

“With what?” Parker asks, curious.

“Drywall, paint, plumbing, electrical… anything really. Scavenging supplies.”

That one sounds interesting. “I’m good at scavenging,” Parker says. “I dunno about the other stuff, but I could probably figure it out.”

Megan nods. “Alright then,” she says. “C’mon, you can even pick which room you want.”

 

Parker’s room has plywood covering the holes in the floor and walls, a broken window, and no furniture.

She loves it.

It has a door that closes, and if the door is closed, nobody bothers her. Mostly nobody bothers her even when the door’s open, except if they’re doing something interesting and thinks she might want to join.

Like the time someone found a dumpster full of day-old donuts, and they all went out at midnight and carried boxes back to the house.

Or the time someone’s birthday party was making a slip-and-slide down the street with water from the fire hydrant.

Or like today: they’ve been looking for more plywood and insulation, since it’s starting to get cold, and someone just started tearing down the house at the end of the block. So once it gets dark, Parker goes with Megan and a few of the others, picks the lock on the construction fence, and the one on the door, and climbs around the shell of the building stripping wiring while two of the guys peel the plywood off the windows and carry it back to the house.

The cops get called eventually, but they come with lights and sirens and you’d have to be pretty slow not to be able to get away with that much warning. Parker even locks the gate back up behind her as she leaves.

Usually it’s not so easy to steal building supplies, though, they’re bulky and awkward and hard to hide. It’s way easier to get wallets on the subway, come back with cash and cards and use those to buy stuff from the hardware store.

Some of the others have jobs of one kind or other, but nobody cares that Parker doesn’t. They know where she’s getting the money. They think it’s funny, since Parker mostly just steals from rich guys in fancy suits. She does it because they’re the ones who have money, but the others say it’s getting one over on The Man, whoever he is. It has something to do with the Fucking Mayor, and the Damn Cops, and Wall Street Assholes, and the rest of the people Megan yells about when she gets mad or drunk or both.

She never yells at Parker, though. If anything, she gives Parker big messy hugs that are uncomfortable but seem friendly.

Once the cops have left they turn the lights on in the downstairs, someone pulls beer and food out of the fridge, and they sit on the pile of plywood and laugh, and talk, and come up with crazy renovation plans, until Parker decides she’s had enough of people and goes up to her room.

And closes the door.

 

* * *

 

 He looks like any other mark. Old guy, grey hair, nice suit, staring out into the middle distance.

Except that when Parker slides her fingers very carefully into his pocket, he locks his hand around her wrist, slowly, deliberately, and without looking at her. He doesn’t say anything either, but after trying once or twice Parker gives up on pulling away. He may be old, but his grip is strong.

When they get to the next stop, he moves toward the door, pulling Parker with him, then stops on the platform while the wave of people passes by them and out toward the street. Then, his hand still locked around her wrist, he looks down at her.

“Hello there, kiddo,” he says.

He doesn’t sound mad. He’s even smiling a little bit.

“Hi?”

“You’re not bad, as pickpockets in this city go,” he says, his voice still level. “What’s your name?”

“Parker.”

“Hello Parker, I’m Archie.”

“Hi.”

Archie glances around, then looks back at Parker. “Why don’t you come to my office,” he says, and lets go of her wrist. “We can get acquainted.”

Parker jerks her hand back but doesn’t run away. Not yet. She’s curious. Why isn’t he mad? Why does he want her to come to his office? Is this a trick?

“Are you a cop?” Parker asks.

Now he laughs. “Far from it, kiddo.” He bends down a little, raises his eyebrows. “I’m a thief,” he says, quietly, “and a damn good one.”

Huh. Parker’s never seen a thief in a suit. And usually people don’t just come right out and say it.

It’s kind of cool.

“Okay,” she says, and he turns toward the exit.

Parker follows him out to the street and down a couple blocks and then back into the subway. It’s not until she’s back on the train that she figures out they’re heading uptown. The train they were on before was heading downtown.

She wonders what he was going to do, that he’s just interrupted to take her to his office. What kind of offices do thieves have, anyway?

 

They get off at 116th, walk a couple blocks east, and stop at a big warehouse. Archie unlocks a door and steps into, yes, an office. Desk, bookshelves, phone, walls and ceiling making the kind of cheap drywall box Parker can recognize now because she’s helped build them. There’s another door behind the desk.

Archie opens a drawer and flips something to Parker. She catches it, sees that it’s a Hershey’s Kiss and grins, unwrapping it and shoving it into her mouth.

“So, Parker,” Archie says, leading her to a couple of chairs in one corner. “You clearly ought to be in school, but you’re riding around picking pockets on the subway.”

Parker waits. He looks at her, then takes a deep breath. “Why aren’t you in school?”

Parker shrugs.

“Where do you live?”

“Lower East Side,” Parker says, with pride borrowed from Megan and Joan.

“And your parents?”

Parker scowls. She isn’t sure how to answer that. Adults react strangely to “I don’t have any.” And she doesn’t feel like lying.

“Ah,” Archie says, as though she’d answered him. “You’re on your own, then?”

Parker shrugs.

He looks more carefully. “You’re not living on the street, are you?”

“No,” Parker says.

He nods. He’s watching her, the way social workers do. “Would you like to come work with me?”

Parker narrows her eyes. What’s this about? Work for him? “Doing what?” she asks.

“Training, to start with. Then we’ll see.”

Well that’s confusing.

But the thing is, Parker’s bored. Stealing peoples’ wallets and occasionally breaking into construction sites isn’t enough to keep her occupied; she’s spent so much time climbing around on fire escapes that she has the ones in her neighborhood memorized, and there’s only so long she can spend working on the house or watching Megan and her friends drink cheap beer and talk about nothing much.

Anyway, this guy doesn’t know where she lives, and she could outrun him if she needed to, so it’s not like she couldn’t leave if she didn’t like it.

Plus, she’s still curious what kind of thief looks like him.

“Okay,” she says.

Archie smiles. “Good,” he says, then stands up and walks over to the door behind the desk. “Come on.”

The door leads into the rest of the warehouse, a big echoing space with boxes stacked in groups, a couple more cheap drywall cube-rooms, all kinds of equipment hanging from the ceiling, scaffolding climbing up one wall.

“Wow,” Parker says, looking around. She starts walking towards the scaffolding. They could use some of this at the house, for fixing the bricks on the outside and the window frames. It’s too complicated to steal though, and too expensive to buy, so they’ve made do with sketchy ladders when they can’t avoid the problems any more.

This, though, this is way better. Long pipes are bolted together, with boards set across to make a set of platforms that go from just above Parker’s head all the way up to the ceiling. She jumps up, grabs one of the pipes, and starts climbing. It’s harder than fire escapes, but not by that much. And pretty soon she’s standing on the highest platform, where if she stretches her fingers touch the metal roof.

She looks down. Archie’s watching her, still standing where they came in. From here Parker can’t tell if he’s mad. She kind of hopes not.

That’s unusual. Parker wants Megan not to be mad at her, because she’s the one in charge of the house, even if nobody says so out loud. She gave up on wanting foster parents not to get mad at her way before she went to juvvie, because Parker knows not to expect impossible things. But now she looks down at Archie and hopes that he likes her. Huh.

Climbing down is always harder than climbing up, but it’s faster too, so it isn’t long before Parker drops down to the floor. Archie’s walking over to meet her there, and he’s smiling, so probably he isn’t mad.

“You’re quite the climber,” he says. “What other skills do you have that I should know about?”

“Thief-skills?” Parker asks.

He nods, still smiling.

“I can boost cars,” Parker says. “And pick locks. And I can drive, too.”

“Car thief, eh?” Archie says. “You must be a quick learner.”

Parker shrugs. None of her teachers ever said that. But none of her teachers cared about her car-thief skills.

“Hmmm,” Archie looks around. “Here, I think you might like this.”

He hands her a—vest, harness, thing. She manages to get it on, and he steps close and tugs at straps until it’s held tight around her. Then he steps back.

“Turn around,” he says, and Parker does. He clips something onto her back. “Come on.”

Parker follows him back toward the scaffolding. There’s a rope tied to one of the uprights that she hadn’t noticed before. Archie unties it, loops it through Parker’s harness, and tugs.

“Okay, kiddo,” he says. “Climb back up there, and this time you can just jump off from the top.”

Parker’s eyes go wide. “Really?” she asks.

Archie points up and Parker sees where the rope goes into some sort of spool thing attached to the ceiling. “That’ll slow you down enough that you won’t hurt yourself,” he says.

Parker grins and starts climbing, faster than the first time. She can feel the rope on her back pulling a little as she goes, tugging her always toward the ceiling. She climbs onto the top platform, looks down at Archie, looks over at the spool-thing her rope’s feeding into, and jumps.

It’s like flying.

Parker lands on her feet, stumbles a little, then jumps back onto the scaffolding to go again.

 

Parker makes it to the end of the first week before Megan figures out something’s up. 

“Where’ve you been sneaking off to?” she asks, sitting next to Parker on the broken couch, both of them eating bowls of cereal for dinner. “You’ve been gone a lot.”

Parker shrugs, stirs her Froot Loops to make rainbow-colored swirls in the milk. “I met this guy, he’s teaching me stuff.” 

Megan’s whole body freezes. “Parker,” she says. “What do you mean? What kind of stuff?” 

“Thief stuff,” Parker says, around a mouthful of cereal. 

Megan closes her eyes, lets out a deep breath. “Nothing hinky?” she asks.

“Hinky?” 

“He’s not…fucking around with you?” Megan’s watching really carefully, like this is important. Like she cares what some guy does to Parker.

The problem is, “fucking around” can mean too many different things. But the way Megan says it it’s clearly one of the bad ones, and everything she does with Archie is fun, so Parker shakes her head. “He showed me how to spot motion sensors today,” she says. “I couldn’t fool ‘em today but tomorrow I will.” 

Megan relaxes against the back of the couch. “You know what to do if he gets handsy, right?” she asks, but it doesn’t sound so important now. 

“Kick him in the balls,” Parker says. They’ve been over this before. 

“Damn straight,” Megan says, and digs back into her cereal. 

 

The next morning, Parker decides to practice by sneaking out her window and climbing down the broken brick wall. It’s harder than the climbing wall at Archie’s, because the gaps aren’t conveniently bright colors like the holds on the climbing wall. But she’s almost down before she loses her grip and tumbles the rest of the way, letting herself roll back when she lands like Archie said rather than worrying that someone might make fun of her for falling. 

She sucks at the scrape on her hand, looks at it thoughtfully, and decides it’ll be fine. Then she heads for the subway. 

It’s only one train from 8th street to 116th, and it’s early morning so it’s busy enough nobody will notice her lifting their wallets. When she gets to the warehouse, she picks the lock and goes into the office, because she beat Archie here for once.

When he comes in, she’s sitting at his desk sorting wallets.

He sees her right away, of course. “Well done,” he says. “That lock is a bit tricky.”

Then he notices she’s sorting the cash. “We do not work where we live,” he snaps. “What if you run into the same person tomorrow and he remembers your face?”

“But there’s millions of people in this city, who says he’ll remember?” 

“Why take the risk? Just for—“ he glances at the bills in Parker’s hands. “What, a hundred dollars?” 

Parker scowls. Just about that much, too many wallets have more cards than cash. “Fine, so what am I supposed to do instead?” she asks. “Get a _job_?” 

“Heavens, no,” Archie says, chuckling. “Just take a different route if you’re going to be working the train.” 

Parker scowls. She hates it when he’s right. 

“Anyway,” he goes on, “pretty soon you’ll be thinking a lot bigger.” 

“Cars?” Parker asks. Cars are fun. 

“Not in this traffic,” Archie says. “No such thing as a clean getaway. No, I’m thinking we’ll start nearby, plenty of warehouses with so-called security systems that will be suitable for a beginner.” 

“Can we go now?” Parker asks. 

“No, Parker, we don’t go in daylight for stealth jobs, that’s reckless.” 

Parker nods. He’s told her that before. She just gets impatient. 

“Tonight then?” she asks, hopefully. 

Archie smiles, tilts his head to one side. “Perhaps,” he says. “Let me make a few calls. Go on, get started in there and I’ll join you.” 

Parker bolts through the door and heads straight for the obstacle course with the motion sensors. She’s going to make it all the way through for sure this time.

 

They don’t go that night. Or the next, or even that week, but then one day when Parker gets to the warehouse, there’s someone new. He’s not old, just regular grown-up, and he’s tall and strong-looking and wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He looks way more like a thief than Archie does. 

Parker looks from the new guy to Archie. “Who’s he?” she asks. 

New guy makes a growly sound in the back of his throat and raises one eyebrow. 

“Parker,” Archie says. “This is Sean. He’ll be helping with the electronics.” 

Parker scowls. “I can do it myself.” 

Archie chuckles, but Parker doesn’t think he’s laughing at her, not exactly. Not in a mean way, anyway. “You’re very good, kiddo, but we use specialists to reduce risk.” 

Archie’s always talking about risk. “Why can’t he just show me what to do?” Parker asks. “I bet I could figure it out.” 

They’re both smiling now. Parker wants to growl and stamp her feet, but she knows that will just make it worse. 

“Sean, why don’t you show Parker what you do?” Archie says. He turns to Parker. “Not because you’ll learn for this job,” he tells her. “Perhaps, eventually, you will want to learn some of these techniques, but this time your job is to get in, open the safe, and get out. Quietly. Safely.” 

Archie turns back to New Guy. “Okay?” He asks.

“Yes, sir,” New Guy says. He turns to Parker. “C’mon, kid, I’ll show you how to hack surveillance cameras.”

 

Okay, fine, yes it is hard to do; Parker has to admit that after an hour of watching Sean at work. The cameras send out an alarm if they’re turned off, and they’re _supposed_ to send out an alarm if anyone tries what Sean’s doing now, but he’s figured out some way to make that not happen. It’s a good trick. 

She’s starting to get bored when Archie comes over with a big roll of paper. He unrolls it on the table in the corner and calls her over. 

“These are the building plans.” Archie smoothes out the paper and waits while Parker looks.

“Where’s the safe?” she asks.

Archie points to an unmarked space of wall. “Here, approximately. But first—” he points to a couple of marks in corners. “These are Guardline motion sensors, just like the ones we have here.” 

Parker looks where he’s pointing, finds a couple more corners with the same markings, points to them. 

“Good,” Archie says. “Now, tell me how you’ll get past them. Where’s your safe path?”

Parker bites her lip. “How high are they?” she asks.

“Ten feet,” Archie tells her. 

Parker traces lines with her finger, trying to think. Finally, she realizes. “It’s just like the obstacle course here!” she says, looking over at it.

Archie nods. “That’s right,” he says. Parker straightens up, grins. “Come on, let’s get some more practice in, and then you go home early and rest up.” 

 

They leave around noon, but Parker is way too excited to rest. She gets a hot dog and a chocolate frosted donut for lunch, climbs up a fire escape to eat on the roof of some fancy apartment building near Central Park, then goes home to find Megan and Joan repainting the downstairs main room, wearing paint-spattered overalls and covering the wall in brilliant colors. 

“Hey, Parker,” Joan says, relaxed and smiling. “How was thief school?” 

Parker glances at Megan, who shrugs. “She asked where you were,” Megan says, then turns back to the wide blue spiral growing on the back wall. 

“Hey, it’s cool,” Joan says. “It’s not like I’m gonna tell the cops or something.” She laughs, then asks, “Wanna help?”

Parker looks down at the pile of paint cans in the middle of the floor. All half-empty, half a dozen brushes in twice that many colors. 

“That wall is still super boring,” Megan says, gesturing with her paintbrush and dripping a line of blue across the floor. “You should make it better.” 

It’s the wall that used to have a hole in it, the shortcut to the kitchen until Megan got annoyed at people messing up her camp stove and gas tank and the tangle of extension cords that keep the fridge going. Now you can only get in through the door, and they can padlock it when there’s parties. So there’s a big piece of plywood nailed across the hole, and the rest of the wall is mostly still whitish and water-stained. And it’s not like Parker could mess it up any worse than it already is, so why not? 

She walks over to the paint cans and picks up a brush. 

 

By the time the older girls decide it’s time to quit for supper, Parker’s wall has a pretty accurate replica of the plans for the warehouse they’re hitting tonight, cameras marked in blue and motion sensors in purple, safe zones painted green, dangerous in yellow and orange and red. 

It doesn’t look much like a building by the time she’s painted in all the colors, but it’s got a lot more straight lines than anything Megan’s done. Her wall looks like water or like someone made the wind colorful so you could see it. Joan’s looks like ribbons hanging down, blowing sideways, swirling in Megan’s wind. Parker’s walls and doors and windows would look strange except that the safe zones make curves and colors that almost fit with the rest of it. 

They eat day-old bagels while Joan heats up leftover soup that they eat out of the pot, one spoon per person. Efficient. Then Joan heads for home and Megan starts washing up, and it’s hours and hours until she’s supposed to meet Archie but Parker doesn’t want to just wait around here. 

“I’m going back to Archie’s place,” she tells Megan. “We have a job tonight.” 

Megan turns away from the tub full of soapy water and looks carefully at Parker. “This Archie guy, you’re sure he’s okay?” 

Parker nods.

“And you’re gonna be careful?” 

“Yeah, Archie’s always talking about reducing risk.”

That makes Megan smile just a little. She sighs. “Okay then,” she says. “Good luck.” 

Parker grins and runs upstairs to change her clothes.

 

Parker makes it through the motion sensor obstacle course three times in a row, and when Archie comes in she’s practicing on the safe in the office. Click…click…click… **click.** There. 

She pulls the safe door open a crack, reaches one hand in, and pulls out…a chocolate bar? 

Archie’s smiling when Parker looks over at him. “I know better than to keep my valuables around here,” he says. “Go on, that’s for you.” 

Parker rips open the wrapper and eats her prize. Archie goes over to the plans in the corner and studies them again, and once Parker’s licked all the chocolate off her fingers she goes to join him. 

“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’ll be fun.” 

“I’m not worried,” Archie says, “I’m being cautious.” 

Parker’s not really sure what the difference is, but oh well. Memorizing the blind spots one more time doesn’t hurt. 

Sean comes in a little later, a bag of equipment slung over one shoulder. He plugs into the phone line, sets up his computer, and scowls at it for a while before he turns to Archie. “All set, sir,” he says. “Ready when you are.” 

Parker’s bouncing on her toes, trying not to run for the door right away. Archie looks around. “Okay. Come on, kiddo, I’ll walk over with you.” 

Parker suspects he’s going with her so she doesn’t run. Running is suspicious, she knows that, but Parker’s so excited to be going out on a real job that it’s hard to stop herself from running or skipping or bouncing the whole way there. 

Finally, a block away, Archie stops. “Okay, kiddo,” he says. “Ready?” 

Parker nods. “Yes, sir,” she says, like Sean back at the warehouse. Like she’s a professional. 

Archie puts a hand on her shoulder. “You get out, alright? That’s the most important thing. We can always hit another safe, but we don’t have another you.” 

Parker nods again. Archie takes a deep breath, smiles, and says, “Go get ‘em, kiddo.” 

 

Manual lock on the back door, not too hard to pick, proximity sensor in the doorframe she blocks with her toe until the door’s pulled back shut. Motion sensor up and to the right, stay against the wall and slide left. 

Parker can see the map in her head, herself an ant-sized figure crawling through the green zones toward her destination. The safe is just where Archie said it was, sturdy and hard to drill but the lock’s pretty cheap. One ear to the metal, stay close to the wall, fingertips feeling for the pins dropping into place. Breathe quietly.

Click…click… **click.**

Parker turns the handle, opens the safe door just enough to get her hand in, and this time…this time it’s not a chocolate bar prize from Archie, it’s stacks of bills, neatly wrapped. Parker fills her jacket pockets, her pants pockets, and there’s still not space for all of it. If she stuffed them down her jacket…

But they might fall out, or they might make it harder to hide from the motion sensors. 

They’re stacks of hundred dollar bills. She has a lot of money already shoved into her pockets. 

Maybe it’s a test. Maybe Archie wants to see if she can not be reckless. 

Besides, she could always come back later. Hand this stuff off to Archie and come back in. 

Parker sighs, closes the safe, checks all her pockets, and eases her way back along the wall, through the green zones and out the door. 

No alarms, no cop sirens, nothing. Parker grins, and for all that she tries to walk calmly, she can’t help half-skipping most of the way back to where Archie steps out of the shadows to greet her.

“Well done, kiddo,” he says, hand dropping to her shoulder as he starts toward home.

“There’s more in there,” Parker says, breathless and grinning and trying to let the weight of Archie’s hand keep her anchored to the pavement. “But you said get out and be careful so I only took what would fit in my pockets because I didn’t want to drop anything and accidentally set off an alarm.”

“Good,” Archie says, “That was smart thinking.”

“We could go back though,” Parker says. “You can take what I have and I could go get the rest, it’s not even that hard and I know the combination now.”

Archie chuckles. “I think that’ll do for your first time out,” he says. “Let’s check back in with Sean.” 

 

Once they’re back in Archie’s warehouse Parker runs over to the desk and pulls out the wrapped stacks of bills. She fans out the end of one bundle, inhales the smell of new crisp dollars, and looks back at Archie.

He’s over with Sean, talking in low voices, but it doesn’t look like anything’s wrong. So Parker counts their haul. The wrappers say $10,000 on them, but she counts just to make sure. Six stacks of $10,000 is $60,000. Sixty thousand dollars. 

“Sixty thousand dollars!” Parker calls to the others. She sets the money down reluctantly and goes over to see what they’re looking at. 

It’s video of her, in the warehouse.

“I thought you hacked the cameras?” Parker asks, confused. “I thought nobody was gonna see me?”

Sean looks up. He’s smiling. Parker doesn’t think she’s seen him smile before. “Don’t worry,” he says. “This is just for us.” He clicks on something and a new window pops up. “This is what they’ll see.” 

Nothing. Nobody. Parker lets out her breath. “Oh. Okay.”

Archie’s still watching the video of her. “You did pretty well, kiddo,” he says, looking up. “We’ll go over the details another day.” 

He walks over to the table and collects the money, brings it over to Parker and Sean at the desk. Sean looks up. 

Archie hands him two of the stacks. He keeps one of the others out, puts the rest in the safe. 

“What about me?” Parker asks. 

“Yours will stay in the safe here,” Archie says. He pulls several bills out of the wrapper and hands them to her. “That will do for now.” 

Five hundred. On a good week working the subways she could get that much.

But Archie’s probably right. What if someone breaks into her room in the house on 7th? What if the cops raid the place? 

Anyway, she knows how to break in here if she needs to. 

“Okay,” Parker says, reluctantly. 

“Come on,” Archie says, “Let’s head home.” 

Sean nods, starts packing up his gear. “Not bad for a night’s work,” he says, pocketing his share of the cash. He slings his bag over his shoulder, shakes hands with Archie, and then reaches over to shake Parker’s hand, too. “Good working with you, kid,” he says. “Let’s do it again sometime.” 

Parker beams. “Yeah,” she says. “It was fun!” 

Sean heads off south once they get outside, and Archie walks Parker to her subway stop. It’s a little after 4AM, and the station is a mix of bleary early-morning commuters and loud partiers coming home late. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Parker,” Archie says, and Parker’s confused for a minute before she realizes it’s morning so it’s already “tomorrow” and not “tonight” and so she has the whole rest of today off.

“Yep,” Parker says. “See you.” 

Archie nods, waits until she gets on the train, then steps to the back of the platform. 

 

Nobody’s awake when Parker gets home, but the radio’s on downstairs and a few people are asleep on the ragtag collection of furniture. 

Parker sneaks past, even though probably she could stomp and no one would wake up. 

She sits on the mattress in her room, the door closed and bolted behind her, and pulls her money out of her pants pocket. Takes a deep breath, enjoying the smell again. She takes off her shoes and lies down, slides the money under her pillow. Parker’s sure she’s still too excited to sleep, but as she looks up, tracing paths through the water stains, her eyes start feeling heavy, and she curls up and dozes off.

 

* * *

 

Archie knows a lot of people. By the time it’s getting warm again in spring, Parker’s met hackers and grifters and thieves, more names than she can remember. She’s learned to crack all kinds of safes, and she’s getting better at twisting and flipping through the laser grid Archie set up once the motion sensors got boring.

The house on 7th has electricity now, and a water line, and they’re filing some kind of paperwork to make it legal for them to be there. Parker heard Megan and Joan talking about it, about how expensive lawyers were and permits for the electric and the water, and the next evening she brought home twenty thousand dollars in cash and handed it to Megan in the kitchen. Once Megan got done screaming “holy shit” and “you didn’t kill anyone did you?” she laughed and hugged Parker and—it almost felt good.

 

Then Archie tells her they have a job in Boston.

“I’ll be flying,” he says, “but you don’t have identification, and it will be difficult until you’re a bit older. You’ll go on the bus.”

“I’ve been on the bus,” Parker offers. “I know how.”

Archie nods. “Good. I’ll go with you—you’ll be my…niece, returning to her home after a weekend visit here. Can you do that?”

Parker shrugs. “Sure,” she says. “I guess.”

“Good,” Archie says. “Now, let’s go over the plan once more.”

 

The bus terminal looks different.

Mostly Parker doesn’t really remember what it looked like, coming in. She remembers too many people and too much noise and not knowing where she was. Being lost.

Parker doesn’t get lost anymore. Not in Manhattan anyway.

And not here. Even if Archie wasn’t walking beside her, she could find her way to the ticket counter. Even if he wasn’t going to buy her ticket, she knows how to do it.

But he is here, and he’s better at the people stuff, so Parker just keeps quiet while he chats with the woman selling tickets.

Parker takes the stiff paper ticket he hands to her, folds it along the perforation, rubs her finger down the edge. This part’s the same as she remembered. A little piece of paper that can take her where she needs to go.

“Okay, Parker,” Archie says, and she looks up. “The bus is just out there. Sean will pick you up at the station.”

 

It’s a short ride, compared to the trip she took to get to New York City. She gets there before dark, and Sean’s waiting outside, leaning against a car. It’s grey, and old, and uninteresting. Doesn’t stand out. Neither does Sean. Parker needs to learn how to do that—to not be noticed. Maybe that will be easier when she’s older, too. Right now too many people think she’s lost and ask where her mom is.

But for now, Sean just reaches out to take Parker’s backpack and toss it into the back seat. “C’mon, kid,” he says, and it’s grumbly but Parker’s pretty sure he’s not mad, he’s just like that.

They stop at a hotel. “Here’s your key,” Sean says, handing it to Parker along with her backpack. “We’ll go up the back.”

“Fewer people know my face that way,” Parker says.

Sean nods, smiling just a little. “Got it in one,” he says, leading the way.

“Here’s you,” he says, once they’re upstairs in the long hotel hallway.

Parker studies the key card for a second, then sticks it in the slot, pulls it out, and the door unlatches. Nice.

“Archie had me pick you up some food,” Sean says. “He’ll be here later and we’ll go over everything then. Need anything else?”

Parker shakes her head.

“Okay, I’m just next door,” Sean says, pointing. “See you later.”

Parker pushes the door all the way open, walks in and stops. The door swings closed behind her with a satisfying clunk of the lock.

Two beds, a little desk, a TV, her very own bathroom, and—she turns back to the door—a deadbolt she can lock. And a chain.

And sitting on the little desk, a hamburger, french fries, and a chocolate milkshake.

 

Being a thief is the _best._


End file.
